question about oils

[Jo Ann]

do we have to use palm and coconut oil with olive oil? or can we just use olive

and for hp do you have to use lard or crisco? is there another way.

i need to know the WHYs of the ingredients such as the major oils/components.

can anyone explain this to me and direct me to a place where it can.

[jbren]

Again, the millersoap site will give you a lot of good information on various oils and methods.

[sudsnwicks]

Jo Ann, you can use olive all be itself. It's called a castile soap, you may have heard the term before.

For HP you can use the same ingredients as what you would use in CP, you aren't limited to lard or crisco.

Here's a chart I use as a rough guideline of why each oil is chosen:

http://www.soapnuts.com/indexoils.html

[Jo Ann]

thanx yinz guys....this has been helpful. i just wonder why so many ppl use coconut oil. the properties charts from both sites are really helpful.

[sudsnwicks]

Jo Ann, if you like to have lots of lather, coconut oil will help you achieve that. If there is a walmart near you, you can buy coconut oil there for $3 for a 31.5 oz container. It's in the oil aisle of the food section.

[Soapmaker Man]

If you want, I will share with you a pretty good soap I call "Wal-Mart Soap recipe." You can buy every ingredient at Wal-Mart, except the lye where you can buy at Lowe's. It's called Roebic's Heavy Duty Crystals, and it is 100% sodium hydroxide (lye) and costs about $7.00 or so for 2 pounds.

PM me if you want the Wally World recipe. It is a 5 oils/fats recipe.

Paul....

;0

[Jo Ann]

can tallow be lard or crisco?

[CareBear]

tallow is generally considered rendered beef fat

lard is pork fat

crisco is hydrogenated vegetable oil - cottonseed & soy

each of these is different

if you are asking if you can SUBSTITUTE the answer is always yes, but expect different results and of course you need to run the NEW recipe through your lye calculator (soapcalc.com is a good one, there are others) to get an accurate amount of lye.

Jo Ann, I would like to reiterate the suggestion for millersoap.com. Don't just breeze through it - read every page. Read each page again. Look at EVERYTHING. Then look at it again until you can kinda pull the pieces together. It really is the most comprehensive introduction to soaping around. Click the links. Learn about soap - it's complicated but simple if you know the basics.

[Jo Ann]

thanx carebear, i've been perusing it

i am gonna have to make sure the lye i bought is correct

[CareBear]

thanx carebear, i've been perusing it

i am gonna have to make sure the lye i bought is correct

It's my favorite site. I have read through it so many time I can probably recite much of the content! Even though I've been doing this for over a year I STILL go back there - because now with experience the explanations make more sense, and things I ignored then are now meaningful.